Latest / The Income Show / Public Company CEO Just Went All In on Bitcoin & Digital Credit | The Income Show | Ep. 6

Transcript

Public Company CEO Just Went All In on Bitcoin & Digital Credit | The Income Show | Ep. 6 · The Income Show

• 0:00
  Governments originally tried to stop it.
• 0:01
  They were talking about stopping.
• 0:03
  That was what the original banter was like,
• 0:05
  is like sovereigns are not going to want competing currency.
• 0:08
  They're going to try and stop it.
• 0:08
  But then everyone realized, hey, this was constructed in a way
• 0:11
  and engineered in a way you can't really stop it.
• 0:14
  This is where legends are born.
• 0:15
  The biggest fortunes have been made when there's blood in the streets.
• 0:19
  When you see red, you should see that as a green light.
• 0:22
  Red is a green light.
• 0:24
  And what everyone else is buying might be a signal that it's, you know,
• 0:27
  you peaked a little bit.
• 0:28
  So for us, we see gold as the original state of money, the oldest form of money, the most accepted, the most bankable reserve access.
• 0:39
  Not easy to move, not as easy to track or take with you.
• 0:43
  Then came along Bitcoin.
• 0:44
  And so Bitcoin we view as sort of the end state of money, where you're seeing this sort of transition from gold to Bitcoin.
• 0:58
  Hey, everybody. Welcome back to The Income Show. This week, I have on Evan Horowitz. Evan, welcome.
• 1:07
  Thanks, Joe. Great to be with you.
• 1:09
  Yeah, absolutely. Glad to have you here. Evan, let's start off, I guess, with your background.
• 1:14
  One, who are you? And two, how did you get interested in Bitcoin and digital credit?
• 1:21
  Yeah, I'm a technologist at heart, an entrepreneur at heart. I've been starting businesses since I was
• 1:27
  very young, whether it was doing your driveway when it snowed or renting out sound for fraternity
• 1:35
  parties at UC Berkeley or eventually starting Farmhouse. Just been a lifelong sort of dreamer
• 1:44
  and wondering what the possibilities could be if you take a chance and go out on your own and do
• 1:50
  things your own way and work with the team to achieve results. And so I grew up on the East
• 1:57
  Coast in New Jersey and came from a normal middle-class background and eventually went to
• 2:06
  UC Berkeley. I was a baseball player all through high school and stuff and got to UC Berkeley and
• 2:13
  it just really opened my eyes to the possibilities of what could happen when you had inclusivity,
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  diversity dreamers all in one place and uh i've always been skeptical of the media
• 2:25
  and uh permission you know anything where there's a gatekeeper and uh so eventually uh connected
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  with one of my college roommates michael landau who's now an attorney and a full stack engineer
• 2:41
  and we started doing some internet companies
• 2:45
  and eventually we tried to change the world
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  and the cannabis industry
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  and ended up with a public company.
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  And eventually I saw Michael Saylor
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  presenting at the Unconference in September
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  and I was like, wow, this is actually brilliant.
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  Cannabis might have a pretty low ceiling right now
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  based on regulatory vibes.
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  And again, coming back to permissions, you know, cannabis is all about permissions and not having them. And then I learned about layer one, Bitcoin permissionlessness, and how nobody can stop us. And so here we are.
• 3:26
  yeah that's an awesome background i guess back to uc berkeley like what what did you happen to
• 3:32
  study there and then to like what what was it like initially that made you know the idea of
• 3:38
  something that's permissionless like interesting to you was there a moment was it the cannabis
• 3:42
  industry or was it something else yeah so uh studied uh mass communications at berkeley
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  so I had Todd Gitlin and Harry Edwards and uh as many like of the most liberal uh instructors as
• 4:00
  you could possibly have and what they taught us was to be skeptical about how news is made
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  and uh so uh early on I got into the internet because um I met a girl from UC Davis at like a
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  rave in San Francisco. And, uh, I asked her for her phone number and she was like, well,
• 4:21
  if you can figure out how to email me. And she gave me this email address on pine.
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  And so I went to the, um, computer lab at UC Berkeley and there were like 20 super nerds
• 4:33
  there working on the computers. And I was like, somebody help hook me up here on this date. Like
• 4:38
  I need to email this person here.
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  So that was my foray into computers and internet.
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  That was a long time ago too.
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  That was 1991.
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  And so I sort of fell in love with the internet and computers and communications right away there.
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  And there was a lot of freedom back then.
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  But you fast forward to like the cannabis startup.
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  And in between we were doing affiliate marketing and domain name trading.
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  and you fast forward to the cannabis startup,
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  and there was just a crazy amount of permissions needed,
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  whether it was even from MailChimp,
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  you know, cutting off your email promotion.
• 5:20
  Oh, you're advertising illegal drugs.
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  No, we're not.
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  We're talking about networking cannabis entrepreneurs.
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  And, or if you needed Visa MasterCard billing
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  so you could monetize your website in cannabis.
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  Nope, can't do it.
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  Sorry, Visa MasterCard.
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  They were like, you're dirty potheads.
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  You can't do it.
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  They're making these morality calls.
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  And then suddenly you start to develop a Bitcoin and a gold treasury.
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  And there's a lot of freedom involved there because there's nobody to get approvals from.
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  You can just start buying Bitcoin.
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  I guess the one approval we needed was for our institutional custody.
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  But there's so many benefits to that.
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  And it wouldn't have stopped us even if we didn't get it. We could have still gone on and moved forward. So I guess the initial foray into Bitcoin came for us in about 2016 or 17. Our domain name store had a client in Amsterdam who was selling a website and he refused to sell it for anything other than Bitcoin.
• 6:29
  and so our company made a commission in bitcoin at that time it was like roughly twelve thousand
• 6:36
  dollars of bitcoin and we held it on our balance sheet for several years until we eventually sort
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  of wound that down and exited the bitcoin at a much higher multiple later and so that was our
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  first you know realization of how frictionless and easy it actually is because when you start
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  to look at Bitcoin as an outsider,
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  oh, this seems kind of complicated.
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  Self-custody, seed phrases, exchanges,
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  DEXs, all these different things.
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  But actually it's frictionless, it's simple, fast,
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  and it was easy to withdraw money from the exchange
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  to your bank account at that time too.
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  So it was a great, great entrance,
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  great initial introduction.
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  And then fast forward,
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  cannabis was sort of like trending towards schedule three and our board was like getting
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  burnt out on the concept of having a scalable enterprise, although we love the industry
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  and the people in it are fabulous too. And, but we wound everything down. We weren't plant touching
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  in the first place. And we said the ultimate use of a public infrastructure is to be a treasury
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  company. And so we restructured our balance sheet and made it just tailor-made for now.
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  What we plan to do is to scale our digital asset treasury. The background of getting into Bitcoin,
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  the permission, you know, well, first, I guess, being an early adopter to the internet, that's
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  pretty cool in and of itself. And then understanding why permissionless networks are
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  important. And then, yeah, now getting into like your company and like what you guys are actually
• 8:17
  doing them. So I'm curious to hear more about that. Like you guys, I think like one of your
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  taglines is like the anti-debasement trade or the anti-debasement company. Can you kind of expand
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  on like, I guess for someone that's watching is like, you know, what exactly is the anti-debasement
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  thesis? You know, a lot of Bitcoiners and gold bugs may have heard it, but if someone's watching
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  this for the first time, they may be like, okay, well, can you kind of explain that from first
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  principles? Yeah. So the anti-debasement company, it's about having sound money as your assets.
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  And so we're looking at two very scarce assets that are monetary reserve assets.
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  They're commodities. They're in many regards sort of non-sovereign. And there's no CEO of gold,
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  although Peter Schiff would like to be.
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  There's no CEO of Bitcoin.
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  You know, Satoshi disappeared
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  and the wallets went dormant.
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  And so there's no VC.
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  There's no central governing bodies.
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  You have to reach consensus.
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  It's market-driven.
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  And in doing that,
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  you avoid some of the things that happen
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  when governments worldwide are just printing
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  and printing.
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  And they have to print.
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  Like, you know, I'm not making a judgment call whether it's good or bad to print money.
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  Like you need money velocity.
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  But money is expanding.
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  And it's not something you generally feel overnight.
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  It's something that you notice over time.
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  Like, you know, the prices of things are just continuing to rise.
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  You go to the grocery store.
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  You go out to brunch.
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  And what used to be like, you know, a $24 brunch is now like $55.
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  And you're like, what happened?
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  Oh, it's a good brunch.
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  But what happened?
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  It's like our money is just not going as far.
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  Whereas you have this convexity in Bitcoin and you also have it in gold.
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  And so for us, we see gold as the original state of money, the oldest form of money, the most accepted, the most bankable reserve asset.
• 10:30
  Not easy to move, not as easy to track or take with you, of course, but then came along Bitcoin.
• 10:40
  And so Bitcoin we view as sort of the end state of money, where you're seeing this sort of transition from gold to Bitcoin.
• 10:50
  And so gold has a lower volatility. So we've done a bunch of modeling over the last year around what a differentiated treasury could look like. And we found that the lower volatility of gold combined with its, your ability to sort of easily leverage it and collateralize it creates an interesting flywheel that no one has really done before.
• 11:16
  There are certainly some companies out there that are having a similar thesis as us where they're buying gold and Bitcoin. No one's really done it with a U.S. regulated public company with one basket, two commodities like that, that I'm aware of.
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  And so the idea is to take the low volatility of gold, combine it with the convexity of Bitcoin, and come out way ahead down the road, way out in front of M2 money supply expansion, currency debasement.
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  And that's what makes us the anti-debasement company.
• 11:56
  Yeah, no, I really like that a lot.
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  But I definitely want to ask you more about like how you managing the balance sheets itself and how you thinking about the different assets on your balance sheet But I guess first maybe taking a step back like you mentioned how like you a very early adopter to kind of
• 12:13
  like the internet itself do you see any like uh i guess how does that how does watching the adoption
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  of like a technology like the internet compared to watching the adoption of something like bitcoin
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  today like do you see a lot of similarities is do you see a lot of differences how do you compare
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  of those two? Wow, that's a deep question. So, you know, when the internet came out, people were
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  like, this is a fad. This is going away. This can't last. Who's going to use this? And, you know,
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  look what happened. And I feel that's probably the biggest comparison for Bitcoin is like,
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  people are like, oh, this is a fad. You know, this will never go anywhere. And it continues
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  to get more and more adoption from sovereign, institutional, individual.
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  It's completely decentralized.
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  And so I feel like you couldn't stop the internet once there were enough providers
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  and enough hosting companies.
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  Even more so, I feel that Bitcoin cannot be stopped.
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  just the
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  pure construction of it
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  the math behind it
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  I mean governments originally tried to stop it
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  they were talking about stopping
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  that was what the original banter was like
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  is like
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  sovereigns are not going to want competing
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  currency
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  and they're going to try and stop it
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  but then everyone realized hey
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  this was constructed in a way
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  and engineered in a way you can't really stop it
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  you'd have to
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  destroy all electronics and connectivity
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  all at the same time or something.
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  And even then we could use Bluetooth online
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  or something to trade.
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  So just the sheer pessimism and skepticism
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  of the average person.
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  But I think there's still many similarities
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  just in the connectivity and bringing the world together
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  and bridging us together.
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  And there's a certain freedom element involved, right? Because, you know, if you talk to like somebody who escaped Syria with their Bitcoin or somebody who was able to get the word out about atrocities in their home country through the Internet back in the day, they're two very powerful mediums of communication in a way.
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  So I guess those are the initial reactions.
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  But we don't know really all the capabilities yet of Bitcoin.
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  We've sort of seen a lot of development of web technology and communication.
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  And, you know, Bitcoin is still relatively young, I feel like, where it's at today.
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  And there's layer two and three innovations.
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  So you have digital money, then you have digital credit.
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  Now you have digital savings.
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  You have digital tokens building on the digital credit.
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  And it's just a really interesting time and place.
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  And it's just there's an explosive opportunity here.
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  I feel like it's the biggest opportunity.
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  Yeah, I want to ask you more about digital credit specifically
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  because you are now a publicly traded company
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  that has decided to put digital credit
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  on your balance sheet yourself as an asset,
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  similar to how Strive put STRC on Strive's balance sheet.
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  Can you kind of tell us about that process
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  and why you decided to not only put just Bitcoin and gold
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  on your balance sheet, but also digital credit?
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  It comes back to the anti-debasement again
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  and defending against this money supply.
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  you know the sailor says it all the time like do you think most people would like a savings account
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  paying more than 10% absolutely so when I look at our budget right so we raised two million dollars
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  in our seed round so far and and some of it is reserved for future use such as like an uplisting
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  thing right we have this whole intention of uplisting we've been vocal about well there's
• 16:29
  a $275,000 fee. There's going to be audit work. There's going to be other legal work.
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  So, you know, we're trying to reserve a portion of our seed round for this uplisting opportunity.
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  But why hold it in USD when we can see a, you know, a dividend on that? And it's a Bitcoin
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  backed so it's Bitcoin aligned.
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  And, you know, at the base layer too,
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  it connects us with our community in a neat way
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  where we're supporting each other,
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  which is part of what we're about
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  is working together with the industry
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  and, you know, cooperating and collaborating.
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  So I was very excited to get the first tranches
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  of our digital credit.
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  So we were able to buy Seda below par, you know, so there's an effective yield there that may even be higher once it re-pegs.
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  Obviously, it can be volatile, but over time, we've always seen it sort of re-peg.
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  We've also acquired 200 shares of Stretch.
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  So we've started our digital savings with Seda and Stretch, and those are the two premier digital credit opportunities.
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  opportunities that exist today. We're aware of others that are being developed right now
• 17:56
  around the world, and we'll evaluate those as well, and maybe we'll add some more. We've also
• 18:02
  looked at a couple of gold-backed yields of preferreds and things like that that are interesting.
• 18:10
  So the idea is to use what's available to us to offset the basement, and in doing so,
• 18:17
  maybe it could actually zero out some of our expenses.
• 18:21
  Like already, what do you think of 13%
• 18:24
  as the current yield for SADA?
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  That, even with the 200 shares,
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  it's already paying for like our AWS
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  and some other expenses are being paid for.
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  We're just basically zeroing out other expenses.
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  So taking the balance sheet
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  and trying to use it as strategically as possible
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  And then the other side of that coin is in not having egregious salaries, in not having overblown executive team, in not having too many heads and too much marketing and flying private and gigantic bonuses.
• 19:06
  So the idea is not to self-debase either.
• 19:10
  Like, you know, we're fighting against debasement from global M2 money supply.
• 19:17
  And we're also battling against our own human tendencies to like stuff and trying to be as patient and disciplined as we possibly can because the duration of all of this opportunity is way out on the horizon.
• 19:35
  And so we have to really think strategically about taking this and building a foundation that will have that duration.
• 19:46
  As you guys continue to scale over the coming 12, 24 months, how do you think about the way that you're going to manage your balance sheet?
• 19:54
  Is there a specific portion that you're going to dedicate to Bitcoin?
• 19:58
  Is there a specific portion that you're going to dedicate to gold?
• 20:00
  Same for digital credit, same for cash itself.
• 20:04
  How do you think about that? Will that evolve? What are your thoughts?
• 20:09
  I think about it nonstop. So right now we're getting a drip of in-kind investment from our seed round where it's coming in in Bitcoin and we need to rebalance the gold because our stated thesis is 70% Bitcoin, 30% gold. Those are the target allocations.
• 20:27
  Well, how often do you rebalance that? Are you going to use your U.S. dollars to buy gold? I certainly don't want to sell the Bitcoin at this early stage of our development. So we're constantly contemplating these questions. And there are some wild cards in there.
• 20:42
  So adding on more capital is a wild card. Also, we have a $20 million equity line where we're able to place puts at a 5% discount to the average price of our stock at our election when it's economically sound and not self-debasing.
• 21:00
  so um you know the goal is to have 70 30 right now we're a little out of balance we have more
• 21:07
  bitcoin than gold but um you know i would like to make a stronger market on our relatively
• 21:15
  seed stage company and be able to use that to get into the equity line to have an accretion
• 21:22
  because from the equity line if you think about one dollar of put going into one dollar bitcoin
• 21:29
  and gold and just having that accretion that's a pretty exciting proposition i think for our
• 21:35
  shareholders long term uh so and and we're raising capital it's all common it's priced
• 21:44
  it's mandatory conversion it's got a long duration as well so it won't be tradable for like
• 21:50
  approximately 14 months from now so the idea is to look at the balance sheet as a long-term
• 21:57
  objective, align with long-term investor partners, make a strong market, tap into that awesome equity
• 22:06
  line. And just, you know, what's the TAM of Bitcoin and gold? What's the TAM of digital credit?
• 22:14
  People say, well, how big can this grow? You know, what's the maximum ceiling on a digital
• 22:20
  asset treasury. Well, I can tell you, if we go multi-institutional and have 250 million bucks
• 22:28
  at every institution, how big can you really take this? It's such a unique opportunity when you put
• 22:34
  it up against other large scale opportunities in the world that would be like in real estate or
• 22:39
  even AI, there's a lot of infrastructure building. Here, it's digital assets and they're very
• 22:46
  scalable and rapid deployment is also another feature.
• 22:52
  So we're going to try and stay true to the 70-30 as we drip in this rest of our seed
• 22:58
  round over the next couple of months.
• 23:01
  Forward-looking statement, obviously things may not go as planned.
• 23:04
  If anything goes awry with that, it's out of our control.
• 23:07
  But things have been smooth thus far.
• 23:09
  You can see us transparently announcing each drip of Bitcoin and gold as we acquire it
• 23:15
  and SEDA.
• 23:16
  and stretch. And so we will rebalance probably maybe quarterly. But I'm trying not to have to
• 23:29
  use any Bitcoin to get into the gold. So that's the challenge. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
• 23:36
  When you look at Bitcoin, gold, digital credit, and even you mentioned digital money that's
• 23:43
  kind of like being built on top of digital credit.
• 23:46
  How do you think about the volatility
• 23:48
  of each of those individual assets?
• 23:51
  You know, like Bitcoin's like obviously the most volatile.
• 23:54
  Digital credit is still, you know, somewhat volatile,
• 23:57
  but a lot less volatile than Bitcoin.
• 23:59
  And then like digital money is like pretty,
• 24:01
  not very volatile, but still like very new.
• 24:04
  And I mean, obviously digital credit is very new
• 24:06
  and Bitcoin's very new,
• 24:07
  but how do you think about like the volatility
• 24:08
  of all those assets?
• 24:09
  I looking for the volatility right So we entered SEDA in sort of a dip moment because of the world mistaken
• 24:20
  letting this instrument DPEG or whatever.
• 24:23
  So yeah, I mean, we're looking to take advantage
• 24:25
  of those price dislocations and have dry powder around.
• 24:29
  So there's irrational price dislocations.
• 24:32
  There's media-driven price dislocations.
• 24:35
  There's world event, things that affect,
• 24:39
  the pricing of our commodities.
• 24:43
  But gold is the number one bank reserve asset worldwide now
• 24:46
  more than U.S. Treasuries.
• 24:49
  And Bitcoin is just rapidly expanding
• 24:51
  to every institution in the world.
• 24:54
  And so I still think you're going to see
• 24:56
  that robust CAGR of Bitcoin.
• 24:59
  I think gold's going to continue to rise as well,
• 25:01
  but it'll never have the compounding nature
• 25:05
  of what happens with Bitcoin
• 25:07
  as things heat up with acquisition and accumulation.
• 25:13
  And if you look at the transition,
• 25:16
  this is just my opinion,
• 25:17
  but if you look at the transition of Bitcoin
• 25:20
  from OG holders to institutions right now,
• 25:25
  I mean, unless the institution is an ETF
• 25:27
  that has to sell when the client sells,
• 25:30
  these could be very long-term holds for them and us.
• 25:33
  and we're all looking just
• 25:36
  it's basically a vault scenario
• 25:39
  so I think I'm super bullish on Bitcoin
• 25:44
  and I respect the gold place in the monetary system
• 25:49
  but super bullish on where Bitcoin is going
• 25:53
  so I think Bitcoin backed
• 25:55
  digital credit is a smart hedge against the basement
• 26:02
  and I've listened to Jeff Walton detail sort of like, you know, he says things like, you know,
• 26:12
  would you give me a Bitcoin today for 10%, you know, for life?
• 26:18
  And, you know, when you do the math with even like a modest Kager, the math works out really well for all parties.
• 26:27
  And so I believe in all of that.
• 26:30
  What I'm not as bullish on would be like stable coins, right?
• 26:35
  You know, stable coins are getting frozen.
• 26:37
  Stable coins are, you know, there could be issues with them de-pegging
• 26:41
  if their root bank is not bailed out in some sort of, you know, situation
• 26:46
  where there's an implosion.
• 26:49
  You have to be bailed out.
• 26:51
  And it's happened before as well.
• 26:53
  It's already happened.
• 26:55
  So definitely not bullish on stables,
• 26:58
  although I think stables are an easy way to transact if you're doing everything quickly and above board or whatever.
• 27:07
  But there's always this, there's a lot of risk there.
• 27:12
  I mean, there's risk in all of these opportunities and that's where the convexity comes in.
• 27:18
  So, but look, you know, this is not a popular sentiment either.
• 27:23
  we're using our corporate treasury shares to acquire two very scarce sound money hard money
• 27:31
  assets so volatility doesn't keep me up at night because um you know we're getting a pretty good
• 27:40
  deal all in all when it comes to the acquisition of the assets and uh so over time you just have
• 27:46
  to take a longer duration approach to everything that we're doing and uh so that's what we're doing
• 27:52
  We're taking a long duration approach and we're simultaneously like optimizing our public vehicle and strategically aligning with the right companies and investors and community members.
• 28:06
  And I feel like we have the world's best assets.
• 28:12
  Yeah, I mean, thinking about the extreme volatility of Bitcoin and gold at times, too, you kind of need that long duration approach.
• 28:20
  Otherwise, if you're trying to time it in the short term, it may not work out for you as we might be seeing it at the moment.
• 28:27
  On the topic of Bitcoin cycles and even gold cycles as well, where do you think we are in the current Bitcoin cycle?
• 28:35
  I think a lot of people are kind of surprised that, or at least in the Bitcoin community, are surprised that gold performed exceptionally well most of 2025 and Bitcoin kind of didn't.
• 28:48
  And obviously, Bitcoin has had a rough 2026 so far.
• 28:51
  Where do you think we are in the context of both of those hard asset cycles?
• 28:59
  The biggest variable in gold to me right now actually comes back to blockchain.
• 29:07
  It's the tokenization of gold.
• 29:08
  So what we really saw was when Paxos and Tether Gold and these products came out.
• 29:16
  that's when the volume started to really pick up.
• 29:21
  That's when you had multiple gold real-world asset tokens trading like crazy.
• 29:29
  It solved some of the transferability and portability issues.
• 29:35
  It's not totally anti-debasement because you don't physically possess it.
• 29:40
  So I feel like in the gold cycle, you're going to see,
• 29:44
  I don't make predictions, but just the sheer nature of banks accumulating gold and BRICS countries replacing U.S. dollars and the oil dollar and all these things.
• 30:00
  And trying to charge tolls and Bitcoin and things like that is a really strong example of how if your enemies can use it, it's a fantastic currency.
• 30:11
  Like even your enemies can use it. You can't stop them or block them. That's actually what I kind of want in my monetary reserve asset is that there's no stopping it.
• 30:21
  So Bitcoin, I feel like the AI trade has been the biggest headwind for Bitcoin.
• 30:28
  There's been a number of headwinds between MSCI and other just sort of random events and wars and instability.
• 30:39
  But AI is a pretty large suck of capital out of the economy right now, out of the investor economy.
• 30:48
  But, you know, being based in Silicon Valley and seeing enough exit liquidity events for people around here,
• 30:57
  eventually that capital should rotate back into the scarce assets again like it'll flush into the
• 31:03
  ipos and these opportunities and then it'll rotate right back out it's got to go into the best assets
• 31:08
  so i think bitcoin will lead the way on that and it'll see a massive uh tranche of uh newly minted
• 31:17
  multi-millionaires that are hedging against the basement like us uh they're welcome to buy our
• 31:22
  basket too and we'll try to amplify it but you know self-custody will be something that people
• 31:28
  will look at so uh that would be one cycle i would optimistically hope for would be the rotation
• 31:33
  of this ipo capital back into these assets when it comes to gold everyone talks about rotating
• 31:42
  uh gold into bitcoin like let's sell our reserve gold and buy bitcoin with it and all this stuff
• 31:49
  I don't see it that way.
• 31:50
  I see it as gold bugs realizing that Bitcoin is the digital gold, the end state of what they were trying to do with their gold and adopting it alongside their gold.
• 32:05
  And that the two assets can live together and benefit each other.
• 32:10
  Convexity in Bitcoin will enable you to accumulate more Bitcoin and gold.
• 32:14
  The stability of gold gives you a low-cost way to collateralize it, to use it to get more Bitcoin when there's a price dislocation.
• 32:21
  They're very synergistic in that way.
• 32:24
  So I would like to see a rotation of gold bugs liquidating other assets other than gold and joining the Bitcoin community.
• 32:33
  And then I think Bitcoiners are kind of okay with gold in general because it's not a shitcoin.
• 32:41
  It's not a shitcoin.
• 32:43
  It's not that other altcoins are shit.
• 32:47
  They may serve purposes fine and well for their communities.
• 32:51
  But this decentralization, this lack of a CEO, lack of a VC, lack of a foundation, lack of a DAO, that's the real trait of Bitcoin that makes it so reliable for me to look out years in the future for us to stake our entire future on it.
• 33:11
  Like we're all in on this opportunity.
• 33:15
  And so, you know, that's what I hope to see.
• 33:19
  We'll see if it happens or not.
• 33:21
  Like I would hate for the U.S. to sell its gold to buy Bitcoin.
• 33:25
  We can just print money to buy Bitcoin.
• 33:27
  Just print it.
• 33:28
  Sure, start a reserve.
• 33:29
  Like I think it'll be very strategic for sovereigns to hold Bitcoin in for many reasons.
• 33:36
  earlier you mentioned how like bitcoin and gold arguably too like is money for enemies
• 33:44
  and it's obviously because of its uh permissionless nature and like we've i feel like we've kind of
• 33:50
  started to see that like you pointed out like the iran or supposedly was trying to accept bitcoin
• 33:55
  and then like in the past i believe like the u.s has frozen like dollar assets whether that was
• 34:01
  like treasuries or bank-like deposits for Russia, for example.
• 34:08
  Thinking back to adoption of the internet and just adoption of everything,
• 34:12
  where do you think we're at in the adoption of like or understanding of like the importance of permissionless money
• 34:20
  or like the importance of money being used for enemies?
• 34:23
  Like are we like really early in people grasping why that's a big deal
• 34:27
  or do enough people in the world already kind of understand that?
• 34:31
  I think we're still early.
• 34:35
  I mean, I think even if you enter the industry in the next couple of years, you'd still be early.
• 34:42
  It's very early days.
• 34:45
  We went from Silk Road being the most famous application of digital, you know, of Bitcoin specifically, to now so many other uses, you know.
• 34:57
  And you could use it to get your mortgage.
• 34:59
  and you could buy it at Schwab all of a sudden.
• 35:04
  It's really interesting.
• 35:06
  So in the retail expansion of Bitcoin
• 35:10
  is going to change things starting from now.
• 35:15
  When you talk about Schwab, Morgan Stanley,
• 35:20
  and Vanguard, you talk about these institutions,
• 35:26
  but the amount of assets under management is pretty staggering.
• 35:31
  But also the number of customers that you're reaching
• 35:34
  that were never reached before,
• 35:37
  they're going to have their first exposure.
• 35:39
  They're going to start seeing Bitcoin in their login
• 35:43
  at Morgan Stanley at E-Trade.
• 35:48
  And every bank has a job opening right now,
• 35:52
  like looking for head of digital assets,
• 35:54
  digital assets marketing, digital assets analyst.
• 35:56
  risk officer uh you name it and so you know with these things happening with i think we're at a low
• 36:05
  adoption rate right now just looking at the percentages of how many you know people own
• 36:11
  bitcoin so i think we're still very early that being said the cat is out of the bag the genie
• 36:18
  is out of the bottle like this is no secret anymore so are we going to see a crazy blow off top where Bitcoin accelerates and doubles or triples in 10 days I think it would take a pretty miraculous
• 36:32
  event for that to happen where suddenly everybody had to have Bitcoin for something really that
• 36:38
  would be a major necessity for air, for food, for water, for shelter, you know, whatever the
• 36:46
  situation might be. But that would be extreme circumstance. So if we just continue in the
• 36:52
  growth that we're starting to see today, institutions are going to open up a ton of new eyeballs.
• 36:57
  People around the world will start to recognize because this is simply a way for them to
• 37:05
  reinvigorate their own local communities. So if your local currency has been like
• 37:12
  dramatically debased. Like if you're somewhere in a third world country and you own a corner store
• 37:18
  and someone has to take a wheelbarrow to buy a loaf of bread. Well, the old saying is, is like,
• 37:25
  steal the wheelbarrow, leave the money that was filling it, you know? So,
• 37:29
  and Bitcoin changes all that. It fixes it. Bitcoin simply fixes that whole thing.
• 37:35
  It can keep communities together. It can keep, you know, jobs and economic benefits locally so that,
• 37:42
  your communities can stay together.
• 37:44
  And that's what I heard about
• 37:45
  in some of the events I've been attending.
• 37:47
  I met a dude from Nigeria
• 37:49
  who, before they discovered Bitcoin,
• 37:53
  all of the teenagers left
• 37:55
  to go find work in the big cities.
• 37:57
  And families were just ripped apart.
• 38:00
  And they had no choice.
• 38:01
  That was the only option.
• 38:03
  But then suddenly, locally,
• 38:05
  they started switching to a Bitcoin standard.
• 38:07
  And now the families are staying together.
• 38:09
  You know, what could be better than that?
• 38:12
  Yeah, that's a good point. I heard someone describe Bitcoin the other day as like increasing your long term future optionality, enabling you to like you have all of these doors open in front of you.
• 38:25
  And like with fiat money, a lot of those doors, unfortunately, close over time before you even get to the door, whereas Bitcoin or, you know, money that doesn't debase can keep those doors open as long as possible.
• 38:37
  so you get to those doors and you have a lot of doors to potentially walk through.
• 38:41
  I thought that was an interesting way to think about it.
• 38:46
  Optionality will save you.
• 38:49
  Optionality will give you hope.
• 38:52
  Optionality is everything.
• 38:53
  So having choices and then choosing to take kind of a difficult path
• 38:59
  because you have the means to do so now.
• 39:02
  Hey, it might be easier to take a factory job and get some minimum wage and work 16 hours a day and not have to struggle to build your own business or do something innovative.
• 39:13
  But if you're willing to take those chances, if you're not afraid to fail, right?
• 39:20
  So Farmhouse, we started in an accelerator called Runway Accelerator in the Twitter building.
• 39:26
  and the first thing they taught us,
• 39:30
  we studied a lot of lean startup methodology
• 39:35
  and the first thing they taught us,
• 39:37
  like, don't be afraid to fail, right?
• 39:39
  So I think, you know,
• 39:42
  having these doors open for you,
• 39:44
  it gives you more of a feeling of freedom
• 39:47
  that, you know, maybe you have less failure risk.
• 39:52
  But even then, I would just encourage
• 39:54
  other entrepreneurs to take the unknown door versus the easy known door.
• 40:01
  Yeah, that's a really great point.
• 40:05
  This is kind of an interesting question.
• 40:06
  Looking forward maybe over the next five to 10 years,
• 40:10
  what do you think is a more common asset for other publicly traded companies
• 40:14
  to put on their balance sheet?
• 40:15
  Is it Bitcoin itself?
• 40:17
  Is it digital credit?
• 40:18
  Or is it gold?
• 40:22
  That's a question.
• 40:23
  So I think there's room for a variety of strategies.
• 40:31
  I think every company should have Bitcoin no matter what.
• 40:35
  You're going to need it.
• 40:36
  It's almost like just being prepared for the future.
• 40:40
  So there's an element like SpaceX is going to be the biggest IPO of all time,
• 40:44
  and they have a billion dollars of profits just on their Bitcoin.
• 40:47
  So that's a small part of their story, but it's a part of the story nonetheless.
• 40:51
  So the world's biggest, most innovative companies are holding Bitcoin on their balance sheet already.
• 40:58
  I love gold for its low volatility, low cost collateralization to leverage it and use it.
• 41:06
  And it being a monetary reserve asset that's 5,000 years old.
• 41:11
  And it's scarce. It's not as scarce as Bitcoin is over time, but it's still scarce.
• 41:17
  And so, you know, companies have choices.
• 41:20
  They can buy Bitcoin, which they should. They can hold gold on the balance sheet. They can buy our security that would have both commodities in one regulated basket is an interesting new opportunity, forward-looking statement there.
• 41:38
  but ultimately
• 41:42
  if you're trying to offset the basement
• 41:44
  I view the digital
• 41:47
  credit as like a sweep account
• 41:49
  right so what we set up
• 41:52
  at our institution is a way to have a checking account
• 41:55
  that we could use for payroll when we have US dollar obligations
• 41:59
  but we can sweep into
• 42:02
  Seda and Stretch
• 42:04
  and other future digital credit
• 42:07
  yield bearing securities. So I think that companies, if you're willing to stomach some
• 42:14
  of that volatility from time to time, then holding digital credit as a sweep account,
• 42:21
  it should really pan out almost to the point where if you can stack up enough digital credit,
• 42:27
  it could completely neutralize your expenses as a company. And that's our goal over time
• 42:34
  is to see if we can get enough SATA, enough stretch,
• 42:39
  enough yield-bearing securities
• 42:41
  that we zero out our company's expenses annually.
• 42:45
  Yeah, it's a really interesting point.
• 42:48
  Maybe we can start to close it out.
• 42:50
  For the audience that's watching this,
• 42:53
  we're recording this on June 5th.
• 42:55
  Today is a pretty red day in Bitcoin
• 42:57
  and just traditional markets overall, unfortunately.
• 43:01
  for when someone listening to this
• 43:04
  experiences a pretty tough day in markets,
• 43:08
  what's something that you think everyone should know
• 43:11
  that it's maybe hard to remember
• 43:14
  in moments like this?
• 43:17
  This is where legends are born.
• 43:19
  The biggest fortunes have been made
• 43:23
  when there's blood in the streets.
• 43:27
  And so when you see a dip
• 43:30
  when you're just thinking maybe I should sell because they're selling.
• 43:36
  Historically, if you bought when everyone else was selling
• 43:39
  and you were buying good investments, of course,
• 43:44
  then you way outperformed because when the bounce happens,
• 43:49
  you have that additional convexity.
• 43:51
  So I sort of look like our purchases of Seda and Stretch are just like that
• 43:57
  because we bought both of them, these tranches under par.
• 44:00
  I view $100 as the peg, as the par here in this conversation.
• 44:06
  So to me that if you can get SEDA below 100, that's additional basis points of upside.
• 44:16
  So when you see red, you should see that as a green light.
• 44:23
  Red is a green light.
• 44:24
  And what everyone else is buying might be a signal that you peaked a little bit.
• 44:29
  So we're looking for those red days to accumulate, especially.
• 44:36
  So we're doing much better in our Bitcoin accumulation as far as our targets for the amount of Bitcoin per dollar invested in the company right now.
• 44:45
  Hopefully that will continue.
• 44:47
  But we'll keep accumulating Bitcoin.
• 44:50
  We have some targets in mind where we would be more patient, but we're nowhere near those targets.
• 44:56
  We're not even 50% of those targets right now.
• 44:58
  So for us, anything in, especially, you know, anything in under six figure Bitcoin to us, you know, not financial advice. It's a fantastic entry. This is a fantastic entry.
• 45:13
  So on the other hand, if you're raising capital and sentiment is low, it gets much harder to raise capital. So that's the flip side. Would you rather be raising $700 million when Bitcoin's at $108,000 and you can raise it in 10 days?
• 45:32
  some people would probably prefer to do that but then now you're sidelined the beauty of our model
• 45:39
  today and how things have worked out just fate is we're able now to dca in steadily over time
• 45:46
  it gives us a constant sort of um news cycle and uh better entry you know average entry pricing
• 45:55
  and uh so you know i i just think that the red day they're gonna happen they're gonna continue
• 46:04
  to happen and uh that's that's part of the markets and you're dealing with a lot of emotions you know
• 46:10
  people are emo i coach i coach my son's travel ball team and i can tell you people are emo the
• 46:17
  players are emo social media has made people emo and uh our goal here is to just not be emotional
• 46:25
  because we have this very long term long duration we talk about the thermodynamic energy stored in
• 46:33
  bitcoin or you know gold has also a long duration by the way ai infrastructure projects buy gold
• 46:41
  It has industrial uses.
• 46:44
  So, you know, gold, I think, is embedded in our industrial society as well.
• 46:51
  So, yeah, so it's red.
• 46:54
  Go take a hike.
• 46:56
  You know, have a fresh orange juice and enjoy your family.
• 47:00
  And DCA in on those red days to lower your cost basis.
• 47:05
  Yeah, I love that.
• 47:06
  I mean, volatility and emotions don't mix too well, especially in a highly volatile asset.
• 47:13
  But Evan, this has been an incredible conversation.
• 47:15
  Really appreciate you taking the time to do this.
• 47:18
  Where can the audience go learn more about you and what you're building?
• 47:23
  I would love to hear from you all.
• 47:25
  So if our basket's interesting or Farmhouse is interesting, I would love to hear from you.
• 47:30
  You can contact us through our website at farmhouse.tv.
• 47:34
  You can connect with us on LinkedIn or Twitter on X where farmhouse underscore Inc.
• 47:42
  My Twitter is at Evan Horowitz.
• 47:46
  And we would love to hear from you.
• 47:48
  You know, if you have opportunities, we're being approached by all kinds of community driven opportunities and, you know, definitely contact us.
• 47:58
  And it's still early days.
• 48:00
  We'd love to hear from you.
• 48:01
  And thank you so much for having me on your podcast.
• 48:06
  And I would recommend to everybody watches the archives of your podcast.
• 48:10
  There's a lot of little morsels in there to learn from.
• 48:15
  And it's been very helpful for me as we continue to enhance our strategies.
• 48:21
  And thank you again.
• 48:22
  I just really appreciate it.
• 48:24
  Awesome.
• 48:24
  Yeah, well, appreciate that.
• 48:26
  And thank you, Evan.
• 48:27
  This was an incredible conversation.
• 48:30
  Take care.
• 48:31
  Thank you.